A prober, which is an inspection device for inspecting a wafer with a plurality of semiconductor device formed thereon, includes a probe card equipped with contact probes that are rod-shaped contact terminals. The probe card is brought into contact with a wafer such that the contact probes come into contact with electrode pads or solder bumps of semiconductor devices. Further, electric current is applied from the contact probes to electrical circuits respectively connected to the electrode pads or solder bumps in the semiconductor devices. In this way, conductive states of the electrical circuits are inspected.
Recently, in order to improve inspection efficiency of a wafer, there has been developed a wafer inspection device that includes a plurality of probe cards and can inspect semiconductor devices formed on the wafer with another probe card while the wafer is conveyed to a certain probe card by a conveying stage. In such a wafer inspection device, when wafers are brought into contact with the probe cards, respectively, in order to prevent wrapping of the wafers, a wafer W is mounted on a chuck top 100 that is a thick plate (FIG. 10A) and then a space between a probe card 101 and the chuck top 100 is evacuated to bring the wafer W and the probe card 101 into contact with each other (FIG. 10B) (see Patent Document 1).
To accurately inspect a wafer using a wafer inspection device requires bringing probes of a probe card uniformly into contact with respective electrode pads or respective solder bumps of semiconductor devices. As such, the wafer is brought into contact with the probe card in a parallel relationship with each other.
However, in recent years, inspection conditions for wafer inspection are complicated, and in particular, inspection is performed under high-temperature environments or low-temperature environments in many cases.